The 3rd niyama is tapas, which is discipline. Some other words to describe the type of discipline intended are diligence, passion, commitment, persistence, practice, effort, zeal, willpower, and service. Discipline might have a "punishment" type of feel to it that many of us humans know as this self-punishment you do at the gym (maybe after new years) for "falling off the wagon". When you add in the previous niyama of contentment, that makes tapas a balanced type of discipline, where we are not engaging in harmful behaviours.

Tapas of the body is service, as it burns away impurities by an unwavering attitude towards making your potential come to life. This is about the dedication and commitment to treating your body with the utmost respect. This service to the body should be enlivening, not exhausting.

Tapas of the mind is willpower, the effort required to achieve something. And the achievements of mind can be purity of thought, gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion. It is a dedication to making these attributes the centrepiece of your human experience.

By summoning the courage to face discomfort, pain, aches, problems, destructive behaviours, bad habits, laziness, we can burn through the obstacles which keep us in those cycles.

You may have some experience at some point in your life of using discipline to the extreme like the "no pain, no gain" approach, which ends up being mostly an ego trip. An ego trip is worth going on just to find out where it leads. I'm sure we've all been on a few ego trips in our time. At least they're sometimes funny in hindsight, but you're totally blind to them when involved in one.

But tapas is a willpower that generates action. Desires or intentions without will or action are just impotent wishes. Will is stimulated by enthusiasm, love, and determination. Will is fuelled by inner wisdom.

Thought is the creator of action. Observing thoughts can help to keep the negative patterns in check, this is the mindfulness component of our practice here. Discipline is a mastery over our urges and impulses and reactions. Bad habits may seem to satisfy but always disappoint, making a sense of satiation without satisfaction, like cheap chocolate.

I have a very bad habit of going to sleep with my earbuds in because I like listening to podcasts while falling asleep and I don't remember anything in the morning, and I end up sleeping with my phone under my pillow every night. Always a lose-lose situation, but yet I still seem to do it because it gets me to sleep. There will always be things we haven't mastered yet, because we would be boring if we did. I have accepted it as something I need to pay attention to more, but have an element of laziness... oh well, I'll do it later. Not embodying tapas there. Procrastination is the opposite of tapas. But on the other hand, I have some healthy tapas when it comes to my physical yoga practice. That for me is a priority.

Tapas does not mean you need to be a type A person that gets shit done all the time, it means to control the flame of passion so that it doesn't blow out like a birthday candle, or get wild out of control like a bush fire. The more we use the "muscle" of our will, our inner resources shed light on our ability to discern, and so faith becomes our guide. Tapas can be seen as a torch to light our way.

Reflect:

Where do you need more discipline?

In the areas that you do have discipline, is it extreme?